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Customer Service Journeys document the experience customers have from their point of desire to fulfillment. It includes not only the interactions a person has with a company, but also the touch points where their impression of the brand is impacted.

“Customer journeys are multi-channel and change direction at a customer's whim — after all, it’s their journey, not yours” (CMSWire)

Evaluating the customer service journey is not a way to box customers into a desired path, it’s a way for brands to better understand customer desires, anticipate needs and uncover opportunities to delight.

But before you can measure this in a meaningful way, you need to draw up clear strategic goals as well as the key performance indicators you will use to measure them. This way you will be able to pinpoint issues, track them back to their source, and apply improving actions. This process will help you to optimise every step of the customer journey so that you can keep customers on the desired path at every point of interaction.

It’s crucial that your customer never reaches the end of their journey with you.

Talk to Ntouch today to find out how you can improve your customer service journeys.

Each year, Ntouch runs fund raising events to help raise money for their main charity, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal. This Bristol based charity was first established in 1995 and is the only charity fundraising exclusively for the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and St Michael’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Special Care Baby Unit) at St Michael’s Hospital.

The charity has managed to raise over £27 million to support a wide range of life-saving medical equipment as well as: family accommodation, patient comforts and run programmes involving art, music and education for the children.

In August, Kirsten and our Operations Manager Holly, took to the skies to take part in a terrifying skydive to raise money for the charity. After a five hour wait for the weather to improve, they finally took the plunge and Jumped 10,000 feet out of a plane. We have happy to say that they are still in one piece and are delighted to have managed to raise a staggering £857.00 for the charity.

We all know that as soon as December kicks in (or from as early as November for those very organised people), the panic of what gifts to get your loved ones can be a real headache. Increasing numbers of people chose to avoid the hectic rush of the shops and click away at their computers to buy online – but what happens when something goes wrong?

1. The payment won’t go through
2. The item is showing as out of stock
3. You need to have the item delivered to an alternative address
4. The order hasn’t arrived
5. The item is the incorrect size or colour
6. The item is damaged
7. Some of your order is missing
8. You need a refund
9. You need an exchange

When problems arise, you want to speak to a real person who understands your frustration. You want your issue resolved quickly, efficiently and with a bit of festive cheer as the cherry on top. It sounds simple enough, but when the number of customer contacts soars in December, many companies struggle to cope. ‘Solutions’ such a generic responses to ensure that people hear within the recommended time frame frustrate the customer further, lead to additional emails and calls and escalate relatively simple enquiries into complaints.

So what can you do?

Be honest with your customers
If you’re experiencing a higher number of contact because of the Christmas rush, tell your customers. Email them back straight away and tell them you will endeavour to respond as soon as possible

Take advantage of all communication channels
Twitter and Facebook are great platforms for providing an immediate response and letting the world know that you appreciate your customers’ concerns.

Read and Listen
Inevitably, if a customer issue is taking a while to resolve, the customer might speak to several members of your customer service team. If this is the case, read previous correspondence or listen to what has already been actioned so that you don’t repeat what’s already been done. It saves time for you, and it prevents the customer from having to repeat their problem over and over again.

Get help
You can always count on Christmas to see a raise in sales, enquires and complaints so get help. Hire a few extra members of staff to help out over the Christmas period. This will help your company run a much smoother operation. Queuing and being put on hold will just frustrate customers more.

Here at Ntouch, we can take care of your customer services so you can join in the festive cheer too.

Customer service is fundamental to your brands reputation. It can be one of the more difficult assets to manage, so the question is, to outsource or not?

Cutting costs and saving time

Customer service outsourcing is certainly a way to free your business from the time and expense required to run an effective customer care centre. Organisations that run their own contact and fulfilment departments, often find that they experience higher costs. When you outsource your customer service, you do not need to invest large amounts of money on employee training, extra staff or purchasing expensive technology to get the best out of your customer service. Outsourcing your customer service can also help you save on time, which means you can focus your talents on other areas of your company while concentrating on its long-term, strategic processes. This will allow you to have the advantage of progressing and staying ahead of your competitors.

Dealing with peak volumes

At Christmas time customer service can be flooded with enquires and complaints. When the volumes are far from steady, outsourcing your customer service can be extremely beneficial. If you find that for three-quarters of the year you need 20 members of staff on the phone but for the final quarter you need 100, then this is the type of model where outsourcing could become increasingly beneficial.

21st century call centres

Forget your view of call centres being run by inexperienced, uninterested people who live on the other side of the world. We are in the 21st-century where customer service has improved dramatically and in recent years there has been a marked shift away from the offshoring of contact centres.

Here at Ntouch, we provide our talented staff with thorough training. This helps us provide you with meaningful dialogue with your customers, which provides you with longer and more profitable lifecycle.

More options and technology

Outsourcers often work with a wide range of services which means that they could have access to options and technology that you do not.

Here at Ntouch, we provide several services. These include consumer helplines, complaint management and brand protection, online retail support, social media response, customer insight data reports and fulfilment services such as running competitions.

Customer Service Outsourcing to Suit Your Needs

There is no "one size fits all" customer service outsourcing solution. There are significant differences between companies in a certain industry as well as significant differences across industries. Every company has its own culture and brand image it wants to portray.

Ntouch’s range of services enable us to provide service outsourcing capabilities that fit your company’s requirements.

Creating an environment where customers feel appreciated improves satisfaction and loyalty, and the best way to achieve this is through actions rather than just words. Here are some simple do’s and don’ts from Deborah Ellis for making your customers feel valued:

Do listen. It is impossible to provide the customer with an answer without understanding the question. Let customers finish telling their stories before trying to solve the problem.

Don’t pass people to others. A one stop service is the best because it saves the customer and company time. If you need to refer the customer to another colleague, explain to the customer why someone else has to be involved.

Do show respect. Good manners are easy to have and go a long way. Ensure that your team are polite and respectful at all times.

Don't forget that your service reflects your brand. Your customers can find what they need elsewhere, but if you make the customer feel appreciated, understood and cared for, the end result is simple but powerful - a strong connection to the customer that goes deeper than the normal company-customer relationship.

Do ask people how you can serve them better. Use the feedback to create customised service experiences. When people feel understood and appreciated, they keep coming back.

Don’t ask people for feedback if you are not going to do anything with it. They’ll wonder why you wasted their time.

Do manage customer expectations effectively. It is important that you let your customers know what is going on. For example, if a plane is delayed and the message shows that the plane will be departing in a few minutes, then it’s a few more minutes and so on. This will only frustrate customers more than if you were to say the plane will be departing in twenty minutes.

Halloween gripped the Ntouch office last week with our annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. Have a look at some of the brilliant Ntouch entries for this year’s competition.

Which one gets your winning vote to win?

You could go for the pretty glittery one or the spooky skeleton leaking blood……eugh!

As usual our entirely impartial judge Andrew Lane was raised from the grave to do the judging!

In joint second places comes…BOO! A great attempt by Andy and the skeletons face by Christine.

And the winner, drum roll please, was the lovely Jessie’s with the amazing haunted house carved pumpkin, complete with spooky spiders and someone trying to claw their way out! I wonder who she put in there and how did she do it….. Witchcraft?........ I wonder if there’s an Ntouch ducking stool!

As usual lots of thought, fun and effort has gone into this year’s pumpkin competition, it’s a wonder how the team still manage to provide great customer service and find out what people think about brands! As the saying (sort of) goes, ‘you need to be mad to work here, but at least we are happy!’

Whether they are criticising or praising your products or brand, customers are online and louder than ever!

Not just loud, consumers can amplify their message in a multitude of ways.

Facebook and Twitter provide the main platforms for airing thousands of uncensored opinions – any one of which could have serious consequences for your brand.

Many businesses have found social media hard to monitor and regulate efficiently, consequently customers are either ignored or not responded to correctly.

There is a huge and rapidly growing group of your customers and consumers who exclusively use social media when they want to talk to you – what is your strategy for answering them?

Ntouch have developed some cost effective solutions.

Firstly we looked at the best way to manage social media and we have now developed an effective strategy and can now offer this to you as a service.

To further improve cost efficiency we are also developing ‘Social Media Radar’ application. This innovative service constantly sweeps your social media platforms for key words and terms, spots service issues to ensure a swift and professional response is provided to your customers.

Data gathered can be analysed to provide the frequency of particular questions or problems, which may have been overlooked in other areas of customer contact.

Why not give us a call today to find out how we can help you manage consumer contact from social media, email, phone calls and even old fashioned letters.

As Halloween fast approaches, take a closer look at your customer service. Are you..

Trick
Don’t advertise special offers if you add hidden costs further along the order process like joining fees or high postage costs, it prevents the customer from trusting your brand.

Treat
Be up front with your customers, if you have increased the price of your products, changed the packaging or ingredients, tell them. Customers appreciate honesty and therefore will remain loyal to your brand.

Trick
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. If you’re experiencing a busy period and can’t keep to the response time you have publicised, don’t leave customers in the dark; keep them updated with status of their enquiry or complaint.

Treat
Always look for the opportunity to go the extra mile. Can you suggest alternative options if the customer’s preferred product is out of stock? Can you offer them a special discount code for spending over a certain amount?

Trick
If you don’t know the answer to your customer’s enquiry, don’t fabricate an answer. Your customers look to your agents as experts of your brand, so if the question can’t be answered straight away, the agent should get back to the customer when they can answer the question.

In a real-time, multi-channel world, consumers expect far more than they have before. Do you have a customer service culture that’s focused on your customer’s needs?

Take a look at Ntouch’s 3 New Years Resolutions and how we can help you achieve them for the year ahead.

1. Provide a personal human touch in a digital world

Under the pretence of efficiency, many call centres respond to high call and email volumes by routing all contact through one central hub and allocating consumers to whichever agent becomes free first. This often leads to generic responses and a lack of personal care and attention. However at Ntouch, by using specialised tools to help route and prioritise to the right agent, we can make sure that the same customer deals with the same customer service representative. This leads to greater efficiency, reduced response times, better case resolution and higher satisfaction rates.

2. Take advantage of the rise in mobile use

The shift from the use of desktop computers to smartphones is changing the types of interactions that customers have with companies. The immediacy of social platforms represents a real opportunity for companies to engage with customers, potentially at the point-of-purchase. Surprising and delighting the consumer in real-time helps build brand advocates, a critical advantage in a competitive market. But if you adopt social media platforms, make sure you have the ability to manage them efficiently. It’s unrealistic to expect your customer service agents to be checking Facebook and Twitter every few minutes, so explore software like the Ntouch ‘Social Media Radar’ which instantly identifies sentiment on brands, products, campaigns or complaints by pinpointing trending hashtags and key words. It prompts our customer service team when they need to respond to an enquiry or complaint ensuring customers don’t get overlooked and the agent’s time is managed effectively.

3. Use customer service data to deliver actionable business insight

In order to deliver a service that inspires purchase, we need to understand shopper behaviour across multiple channels of contact. Insight data gives you the opportunity to study realistic feedback, it allows you to make informed decisions about your future brand and marketing strategy, and achieve optimal return from campaigns. Ntouch does this though our ‘Customer Insight’ department. We can tell you what your customers are saying, feeling and how they are responding to your products and services. This can be achieved by service benchmarking against your competitors, telephone surveys to collect verbatim responses to frequent issues, and operations audits to identify gaps in your customer service journey.

Improve your customer service culture and 2014 will be best year for your business yet!

In the original (and let’s face it the best) version of this iconic film, the young Daniel doesn’t understand the value of spending his time waxing the car, sanding the floor or painting the fence in order to master karate. His head is filled with the excitement of awesome high kicks and brick smashing hand chops. What Daniel didn’t appreciate was that these simple hand and arm movements became memorised in his brain so that his responses became instinctive. So when Daniel found himself in the face of danger, his hands knew exactly what to do, and what seemed like useless work was actually valuable training that gave him an advantage against his opponent. Mr. Miyagi’s foresight proved that fighting with your head is just as important as fighting with your hands.

So how can you be more like Mr. Miyagi with your customer service department?

Understand the value of training

Customer service training is essential in creating a well equipped, efficient and trophy winning team. Rather than just providing your agents with a standard script in which to read out automated answers like a robot, take the time to give them the foundations they need to fight any complaint or difficult enquiry. Teach them the importance of customer empathy, perceptive listening, an easy to understand pace and a friendly tone. Like Daniel, these tools will allow your agents respond instinctively to the customer in a way that benefits the company and makes the customer happy.

Become the award winning champion of your client’s brand

When Mr. Miyagi and Daniel come up against the Cobra Kai students, whose leader has trained his students to win by any means necessary, it’s the titles and the trophy that mean more to the Cobra Kai than honour. In the customer service world companies can fall into the trap of focusing on awards and statistics to prove their high-speed response rates and impressive volume call handing ability. But who is really winning when a company achieves their results by sending out automated responses from a do-not-reply email address, or wrapping up calls quickly to keep the duration time down…certainly not the customer! Merely dealing with customer complaints efficiently does not give sufficient information to know whether you are doing things right, but when consumers get great personalised customer service and experience genuine empathy, brand loyalty increases with a direct link to increased profitability.

Gain the competitive edge with customer insight

For Daniel, knowing his strengths and working on his weaknesses was a constant process, and likewise consumer insight is integral to the continued success of any customer care service. Through the collection and analysis of information provided by customers or based on their purchasing behaviour, you can learn valuable insight into the loves, hates and opinions of your consumers. By listening to how customers feel about your products and compiling this data into bespoke and detailed period reports, the ongoing analysis of consumer contact will highlight key issues so that you can work on your weaknesses and high kick your way up to the black belt of customer experience excellence!